After coming up with the concept for my story, I was ready to start developing the narrative and visuals of it. I decided to start off by designing the characters, as I had as lot of things to work out in terms of their movement; I needed to figure out how I was going to characterize the candles and have their actions and emotions be clear to the audience, As well as How they would move and interact with each other and the world around them, and whatever I decided could possibly influence/change the narrative. I completed some rough sketches to figure out their fundamentals before moving on to the designs for each character;

In terms of movement, I decided that the characters would remain mostly still; this could add a conflict into the narrative where the characters want to move around, but are unable to. They could jump small distances by springing upward, causing their candles to hop, but their weight wasn’t consistent and they’d remain practically weightless for other parts of the animation. I decided I’d base each character on a shape that reflected something about their character, influenced by our previous character design assignment; A strong character could be boxy and stable in shape, while a flimsier one might be more tube shaped and a stuck up one might be more triangular with a lot of corners. The designs would be relatively simple, with each flame distinguished by their head top and face, and they’d be able to morph their bodies and change shape at will.

I wanted Wixly to be a ‘gentle giant’ sort of character; someone who was big, healthy, confident and strong, but not threatening; I wanted him to look soft and cute. I remembered something that was said in the artbook for the game ‘The legend of zelda: breath of the wild’, which I’ll insert here;

To paraphrase, the designer chose to make the monsters in the game look a little cute and charming as opposed to scary and threatening, and he included small details for them such as snoring when they sleep and looking up to the sky when it rains. The intention behind this was to engage players more; If the monsters are presented as friendly, cute and innocent in some of their actions instead of completely violent beings, we empathize with them a bit more and see them as more organic creatures going about life and doing what they feel is necessary in the same way we are, even if they’re our enemies in the gamne. Another example of this design process being effective is here;

https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/2/17642868/robots-turn-off-beg-not-to-empathy-media-equation

In this study, people were more hesitant to switch off robots that were designed as cute and begged to not be turned off, claiming to be afraid of the dark, despite knowing that robots don’t feel emotions and aren’t sentient beings. As my characters are quite abstract in concept, I needed some human elements in their designs to ensure that people could still empathize with them and read their emotions; this was important as my piece was meant to elicit an emotional response.

Going back to the design, I chose to make Wixly a bit soft and cute looking, despite his strong personality and muscular appearance, as I felt it would make people root for him and want him to stay safe and protected, making his disappearance in the end even more effective. I made his main shape a rounded square, giving him a bulky and yet soft appearance due to his lack of harsh edges, like a pillow. His facial expressions and actions would also be very exaggerated; despite being large and strong, He has a soft personality and emotes fully without trying to look strong. In his middle aged appearance he’s slightly smaller with some aging lines and thinner hair, and in his elderly form he’s reduced to just a head with more wrinkles, less hair and closed eyes. I based his prime design on strong actors who have a conventionally masculine ‘ideal’ appearance, aiming to make him clearly readable for audiences by giving him similarities to humans. I considered changing his hair between ages, but decided it was best to keep him recognizable by maintaining his features.

With Wixly completed, I decided to move on to the son flame;

With everything decided, I created the character sheets;

My next step was to create some Animation tests, to ensure that my characters looked right moving in the ways I had intended for them to. I started with the jumping animation;

Finally, I created the animatic;

I presented everything in an Interim session shortly after finishing the animatic, and my feedback was;

1. Shorten the animatic a bit; cut uneccesary shots
2. consider how to make them look more like flames in their movement; possibly head flickers, embers, certain effects in Harmony such as the glow, etc.

With this feedback, I was ready to start my next steps; more animation tests and a more refined animatic.